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diy television

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gliptitude

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hello. i am an electronics novice. this is my second post here. my electronics experience consists of making an led light up and also building a guitar stompbox after somebody else's schematics.

:shock: i am looking to build a television from the ground up and wondering if anyone can reference a specific project on the web or in a book. :shock:

i searched this forum for similar posts for a while with no luck (there are over 100 pages!). a reference within this forum would be good too.

a primitive television (mechanical...) is just as good for me if there is a successful step by step project out there. as long as it is modular and can display some kind of signal and results in a free-standing television console.

some things i found so far, that are not quite what i am looking for as described above, are an LED propellor clock and also a "working baird televisor", which is mostly just an experiment demonstrating the mechanical process in conjuction with pc hardware and graphics files. i prefer a substantial project to an experiment.

i appreciate any suggestions.
 
I think jumping from an LED to a television is a bit extreme. Heathkit did offer a color television kit 30 or more years ago - you might search for something like that. Some of the mail-order technical schools used to provide something similar - maybe they still do today. I know you can purchase AM and AM/FM radio kits that are made specifically for learning - open layouts and logical order to things to help with understanding.

Given the relatively low cost of a television it would seem that few would embark on such an endeavor - and only a small portion of them would bother to document their efforts.
 
I got interrupted before I could finish my thoughts - that's what I get for squeezing this in at work.

Amateur radio operators used to and may still operate a mode called slow scan television. While that is still quite a challenge (especially for a novice) you are likely to find descriptions of projects from scratch. Search under Amateur Radio SSTV for starters.
 
thanks for taking time to answer my questions!

i'm still following up on the slow scan tv tip. it is another thing i have heard of but not yet found a project for. i had previously found one person's sstv page which presents his work in that area, something about being able to create the illusion of super definition when screening motion picture footage containing dramatic movement (as opposed to talking heads or static landscapes) on an sstv. the site has downloads of slow scan images and it appears he built a modular slow scan device to play back magnetic tape video tracks, but no project plans or schematics are presented.

also along the line i saw something, maybe it was sstv(?), about how to broadcast on radio frequencies. nothing on building a sstv reciever though.

while browsing electronics books at the library i read in the introduction in one book that "...it is quite a thrill to hear your first homemade radio tune in to a station or to see your first television screen light up..." but a television was not one of the projects listed in the book. :x

i have started on electronics with a guitar stompbox b/c it is popular and supported by a web community and lots of schematics, available parts etc. i was also referred earlier to "Rickard's electronic projects page" on diy video games and displays, all of which he provides instructions and plans for, (he claims over 100 individuals have built his projects from his plans).

obviously there are numerous radio projects, even full kits, but why not television? :cry:

i guess diy radios are relatively simple and comperable to modern consumer products in performance, while television is much more sophisticated?
 
i found a list of schematics for pre-wwii tv's and radios:

**broken link removed**

could some of the advanced electronics wizards of this site successfully acquire the materials and build a working television simply by studying, interpreting and copying one of these (or similar) schematics?
 
In the days before high density silicon arrays , thermal imaging systems used the rotating or oscillating mirror techniques to break the image source down into pixel points and focus them each in turn upon a single sensor. The idea was reversed in the late seventies by the japanese to create large projectors using a modulated laser beam. The mirrors themselves do not have to be big or sweep through large arcs and can be rapidly positioned using simple electromagnetic induction. Full colour gets a bit more tricky requiring some fancy optical guides to mix the three beams along.
 
hmmm. interesting. are there any step by step projects out there for a thermal imaging system, which could be built by a highly disciplined, detail oriented, instruction following electronics novice? is this like a nipkow disk? i have found experiments with nipkow disks, but none result in a free standing display, but rather seem to demonstrate the effect using pc hardware.
 
The concept owes much to the nipkow disk but can be made a whole lot
smaller as this link shows...
**broken link removed**
but there is no reason why it cant be built a little bit larger , if anything it makes construction less fiddly.

My best advice would be to rummage around the patent office files
https://www.freepatentsonline.com/4924094.html
 
gliptitude said:
.....a primitive television (mechanical...) is just as good for me if there is a successful step by step project out there. as long as it is modular and can display some kind of signal and results in a free-standing television console.......
Ah!...sigh!...memories. Reminds me of the original pre-WWll Baird 30line television system of the '30s. Maybe not much interest to you but here are a few details. Perhaps you could reproduce it! :)

It was a low definition system - the world's first - and sound and vision were put out on AM on Medium Wave by the BBC.

The 'Baird Televisor' used a Nipcow disc but other versions used a mirror drum technique. Both used a neon as the light source. Quality with 30 line?...Ugh! (the BBC gave a representation of this system several years ago at the Science Museum in London). The system was dropped by the BBC in favour of the Narconi high definition system. Just as well - it would never have taken off.
 
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